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Comment by durzagott | Hacker News Reader

Does anyone know why American headlines are written in this way? It would sound more natural if it was "Signs of Insiders' Edge in Fantasy Sports"

I've seen this a few times before, so I'm guessing it must be a cultural thing.

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It might be a New York Times thing, or at least one that has perhaps spread to other American journalists: [0][1][2]

"The new-style headlines are a far cry from stereotypical Times headlines, which have been mocked for the prepositional phrases that often introduce them, like this one from last Monday’s paper, “After 8 Shots, a Quiet Officer Now Scorned.” Their frequency years ago once led to a Twitter meme in which book titles were rewritten in that style. (Among them: “Of Oz, the Wizard.”)"

0. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/19/public-editor/hey-google-c...

1. http://www.poynter.org/news/mediawire/193943/on-twitter-book...

2. Yes, the irony is that this is also a New York Times article.

You already received a solid and accurate reply, but consider it as the headline equivalent of how you would structure a lengthy email you actually want the recipients to read. Firstly, you know the subject line is critical, but people will almost always glance at an email regardless. Secondly, you know you need short paragraphs or the wall of text will scare them away. Thirdly, you need to explicitly structure each paragraph with a strong subject -- either an easily parsable complete sentence or a bullet. Fourth, don't write it like you would a novel. Focus on facts and eliminate editorialization.

Finally, close it with a call to action. Frankly, with the advent of Google Drive/Docs, I've started getting in the habit of putting all the meat of an email in a separate linked document and just placing the subject, intro and call-to-action in the body of the message itself.

This is roughly how newspapers work, too.

My only guess would be that it more quickly gets you to the subject. If you don't care about fantasy sports, you're unlikely to care regardless of the predicate used.

Yes, it's to grab your attention with the broad subject, and then tell you something interesting about it. This ensures that you click on the headline.

In your version of the headline "Signs of Insiders' Edge in Fantasy Sports", your typical American reader has already lost interest by "Signs of Insiders' Edge" which is kind of an obscure metaphor.

Whereas the paper one grabs the attention with "Fantasy Sports". You like fantasy sports, you play fantasy football at your cubicle job every day. "Insiders' Edge"? Oh shit, there must be something wrong with it. Better click on the headline and check that out.

Boom, NYTimes serves you 200 ad impressions (or sells a paper copy).

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